The Clock Winder is a 1972 novel by Anne Tyler. Plot The protagonist of the story is Elizabeth, a young woman who is taking time away from college to earn a bit of money and discover a sense of direction. By happenstance, she ends up landing in...
Nearly every week for the past 10 years, Harold Graham has tended to Manheim's street clock, winding it to keep it running. But due to some health problems, he turned the clock key over to Elam Snavely in January. "I wanted to give...
The winder of the town clock was recognized for a decade of service by Manheim Historical Society during a recent awards banquet. Borough resident Harold Graham received the society's Red Rose Award, which honors a person or group of people for contributions to...
[The Clock Winder seems to have] many of the virtues that we associate with "southern" writing—an easy, almost confidential directness, fine skill at quick characterization, a sure eye for atmosphere, and a special nostalgic humor—and none of its liabilities—sentimentality, a sometimes cloying innocence wise beyond its pretense, a tendency toward over-rich metaphor. The title character is 20-year-old Elizabeth, a strong figure who is both oddly timeless and perfectly conte...
[Anne Tyler] writes of lonely, unhappy, confused individuals who seek meaning, comfort, and a bit of human understanding and contact. Her closest progenitor is Carson McCullers, but I find Miss Tyler's work to be more wistful, delicate, and touching. In ["The Clock Winder"] one can not only witness and understand the incredible difficulty of human relationships but also the ambivalent burdens of family life. Parents cannot understand their children, and children cannot understand their ...
[At the end of] The Clock-Winder, the domestic settlement and content which have been achieved are seen slightly distanced, through the subdued distress of Peter, hitherto offstage. 'He's just back from Vietnam,' they say of him. 'Everyone murmured, as if that explained things.' Miss Tyler's book is quite apolitical…. [It] is warmly and shrewdly written, the characters are persuasive, and there is a salutary sense that bourgeois life is not necessarily rotten...
